Five U.S. Troops Die In Iraq Push

[David]

AP


Five U.S. troops, four soldiers and a Marine, have been killed in western Iraq as the military launched its second major operation in the region in four days. Operation "Iron Fist" was being conducted near the Syrian border and operation "River Gate" has been launched in the Euphrates River valley.

The military says the Marine was killed by a roadside bomb yesterday. It's the first announced U.S. death in the major western Iraq sweep that began over the weekend.

Three soldiers assigned to the same unit as the Marine were killed by another roadside bomb while conducting combat operations in another town where the second major offensive started Tuesday in a cluster of cities in the Euphrates River valley. This operation is aimed at insurgents using the area as a safe haven in a region where 20 Marines were killed in August.

Air strikes by U.S. warplanes and dozens of helicopters set off explosions that lit the city skylines of Haqlaniyah, Parwana and Haditha before dawn. Bridges across the Euphrates River between Haqlanaiyah and Haditha were bombed to prevent insurgents from using them. About 2,500 U.S. Marines, soldiers and sailors, and hundreds of Iraqi troops, took part in the operation, codenamed River Gate.

The military also says it's investigating the fatal shooting of a soldier yesterday near Fallujah, about 40 miles west of Baghdad.

At least 1,941 U.S. military members have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.

In related developments:


A suicide car bomb exploded at a checkpoint at the main entrance of Baghdad's Green Zone on Tuesday, killing two Iraqi policemen and wounding five, police said. The high-security area is home to Iraq's parliament and the U.S. Embassy. The explosion, which sent plumes of black smoke up over the Green Zone, occurred at about 1:20 p.m. at the gate that many Iraqi employees use to enter and leave the area where they work for Iraq's government or for the U.S. and British embassies. The powerful blast killed two Iraqi policemen and wounded five, said police Lt. Mohammed Kheyon. The sound of gunfire was heard after the explosion, but Kheyon said he had no immediate information about that.


Al Qaeda in Iraq has urged supporters to intensify attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces during the holy month of Ramadan and called for a boycott of next week's constitutional referendum. The call to boycott the national vote on the new Iraqi constitution was issued in an Internet posting Tuesday, while the exhortation to increased attacks was published on the Web a day earlier.


An Iraqi court on Tuesday sentenced 28 people, including two Saudis, a Yemeni and an Algerian, to prison terms for committing terrorist crimes in Iraq. The Iraqi Central Criminal Court sentenced Khudeir Abdellah Mahmoud, a Saudi, to 20 years after earlier convicting him of illegally entering Iraq to assist terrorists and for conducting terrorist attacks on the citizens.


In Ramadi, insurgents using rocket-propelled grenades hit two Iraqi military vehicles, and seven militants were killed in the fighting that resulted. Mortars also were shot at a U.S. base in Ramadi, causing no casualties, and soldiers returned fire with artillery. Insurgents wearing black hoods were seen carrying machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in Ramadi's streets, and Iraqi civilians gathered around the two burning Iraqi army pickup trucks.


On Saturday, about 1,000 service members launched a separate U.S. offensive, Operation Iron Fist, farther to the west in the Euphrates River valley near the Syrian border in the village of Sadah and two nearby towns, Rumana and Karabila.

"The operation's goal is to deny Al Qaeda in Iraq the ability to operate in the three Euphrates River valley cities and to free local citizens from the insurgents' campaign of murder and intimidation of innocent women, children and men," the U.S. military said in a statement.

Iron Fist, which continued Tuesday, was aimed at al Qaeda in Iraq insurgents who receive reinforcements and supplies from Syria. At least 57 insurgents have been killed, the military said, and one U.S. Marine was reported killed. Soldiers with air support were conducting house-to-house searches for militants.

Operation River Gate was taking place in Haqlaniyah, Parwana and Haditha, three cities that have no Iraqi police or troops based in them, leaving their streets open to roving insurgent groups.

The cities, with a combined population of about 100,000, are located 90 miles east of the Iron Fist offensive and 175 miles northwest of Baghdad.

On Monday, the United Nations announced in New York that it is distributing millions of copies of Iraq's draft constitution in this country ahead of the referendum. But residents in Baghdad and several other provinces told The Associated Press on Tuesday that they have not received the document or seen it being handed out in their areas.

Meanwhile, Sunni Arab leaders continued to criticize the Shiite-dominated parliament for its weekend ruling on the constitution.

The parliament decision on Sunday was the latest instance of the Shiite-dominated government making a favorable interpretation of rules on the constitution.

Those rules state that the constitution is defeated if two-thirds of voters in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces reject it, even if an overall majority across the country approve.

Iraq's Sunni Arab minority has been counting on those rules to defeat the charter at the polls. There are four provinces where Sunni Arabs could conceivably make the two-thirds majority "no" vote. But instead, parliament, which has only 16 Sunni members, approved an interpretation stating that two-thirds of registered voters ? rather than two-thirds of all those who cast ballots ? must reject the constitution for the rules to apply.

The change effectively raises the bar to reach the two-thirds mark.

"This will make it impossible for residents of the Iraq's few mostly Sunni provinces to bring down the constitution," Saleh al-Mutlaq, a leading Sunni politician, told The Associated Press. "The aim of this move is to pass the constitution and to impose it on everybody regardless of their opinions."

Sunni Arab leaders fear the constitution will fragment Iraq, allowing Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north to form mini-states.